Sunday, April 11, 2010

In my woods walk this afternoon I think I found, in an old mill pond, some frogs' eggs, which will most likely be eaten by ducks but nonetheless, it made me profoundly happy. I used to gather a slithery coffee-can-full of them every spring as a child, and would hatch them in large jars on my bedroom windowsill. I fed them boiled romaine lettuce. (Don't know where I got this information, but they ate it and thrived.) When they grew legs and their translucent fins faded, I built them a home in an old wheelbarrow: mosses and rocks and mud and water. And when they became springy enough, they leapt free and inhabited the woods, their songs entuning the dusk.

I also saw, today, an impossibly tiny rabbit, palm-of-my-hand size.

The woods are glowing with a nearly-neon chartreuse green. The thimbleberries are in bloom,as are the trilliums --and the brazen skunk cabbages:

"Like other poets, I am often asked if I have a spiritual practice. Yes, writing is my spiritual practice."— Alicia Ostriker

"The trick, Gloria thought as she experienced near-whiplash at the revelation, was to keep the level of believing in magic constant."—Marylinn Kelly

"Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me."—Sigmund Freud

"...and following the wrong god home we may miss our star."—William Stafford

"I am in love with the world.""—Maurice Sendak

“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.” —Rainier Maria Rilke"Writing means revealing oneself to excess."--Franz Kafka"There isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails. " --Raymond Carver"Someone I loved once gave mea box full of darkness.It took me years to understandthat this, too, was a gift. "--Mary Oliver"In the middle of the journey of our lifeI found myself in a dark wood,For I had lost the right path.And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars." --Dante Alighieri